Rite Aid

Rite Aid's acquisition of Revco and its 221 Virginia stores will give the drugstore chain 381 locations in the state - at least initially. To help make the deal pay off, Rite Aid plans to shutter 300 stores nationwide. Rite Aid officials said Thursday that decisions about which stores will close won't be made until early next year, but the closings likely will occur in areas where there is "high duplication." On the Peninsula, the two chains have about 25 stores, some of which are close to one another.

By Robert Brauchle, rbrauchle@dailypress.com and By Robert Brauchle, rbrauchle@dailypress.com | August 28, 2014

HAMPTON - With classes just around the corner for students and teachers, a project to move the Gloria Dei Lutheran School on Fox Hill Road is just now starting to take shape. Construction crews arriving in mid-July have raised many of the school buildings and plan to move them back on the property toward the small lake, just barely visible from Willow Oaks Boulevard. A free-standing Rite Aid will then be built at the corner where the school once stood. The City Council granted Gloria Dei permission to perform the project Jan. 8 although site work on the property began only in the past few weeks.

HAMPTON - A request by Rite Aid and Gloria Dei Lutheran School to build a free standing pharmacy at Fox Hill Road and Willow Oaks Boulevard has received an initial backing from the city's Planning Commission. If approved, Rite Aid would build a nearly 15,000-square-foot pharmacy and convenience store on the site of the existing Gloria Dei Lutheran School and day care buildings. The school would then build a series of small buildings just north of its existing location. Rite Aid already operates a pharmacy in the neighboring Willow Oaks shopping center.

Clearance clothes at Toys "R" Us have been discounted to $4 or less. Target has discounted its clearance toys by 70 percent. Rite Aid is offering a huge Register Rewards sale. Harris Teeter is planning a triple coupon sale. Those are just some examples of the tips that Savvy Shopper Street Team members regularly send in to share with Daily Press readers. Since 2009, the Savvy Shopper Street Team has tested products, offered personal finance tips, pointed out new stores and offered advice on where to find the best deals.

Brooks and Eckerd drugstores will be a vanishing sight across Virginia and the U.S. after the $2.36 billion buyout. Rite Aid Corp. announced Monday that it has finalized its acquisition of the Brooks and Eckerd drugstore chains in the United States. Under the deal, Rite Aid bought 87 Eckerd stores in Virginia, bringing the total number of Rite Aid stores in the state to 220. All of the acquired stores and distribution centers will be remodeled and carry the Rite Aid name; that process is expected to be completed in about 16 months.

For the third day in a row, shoplifters set their sights on the Benns Church Boulevard Rite Aid. But this time, Smithfield police caught suspects almost immediately. Four Portsmouth residents were arrested Wednesday morning and charged with stealing needles, aspirin and other pain relievers. Kenneth Pitt, 35, was charged with grand larceny and possession of cocaine. He was also charged with petty larceny in connection with shoplifting from Rite Aid on Monday. Police Chief Mark Marshall said he doesn't know how much was taken from the store on Monday, but that merchandise has not been recovered.

Rite Aid opens a new prototype store today in the Denbigh Mall shopping center, at the intersection of Denbigh and Warwick boulevards in Newport News. It replaces the smaller Rite Aid across the street in the Warwick-Denbigh Shopping Center. The 9,600-square-foot store will include a drive-through pharmacy and an express mail, fax, copy and photo area. The store will also double as a convenience mart, carrying refrigerated and frozen foods. Meanwhile, Revco, which is in the process of being acquired by Rite Aid, will open a prototype store of its own Sunday just a couple of miles away at the intersection of Warwick Boulevard and Colony Road.

For months rumors of a Rite Aid coming to the Wythe area had a few local merchants wondering about their futures. Now they don't have to worry. Rite Aid has canceled plans for the Kecoughtan Road store because of "the expense of the project," company spokeswoman Sarah Datz said. The scuttlebutt had been circulating in the nameless, weathered strip of shops across from the Be-Lo supermarket since spring - when the drugstore chain approached Hampton Arts Commission director Michael Curry, a nearby resident, about selling his home.

Newport News' Warwick Center has captured another major tenant. Rite Aid will move into the shopping center this winter, in the site last occupied by Steve's Place for Savings. The Camp Hill, Pa.-based company is aiming for pre-Christmas opening, spokeswoman Suzanne Mead said. The 9,600-square-foot store will replace the 3-year-old, 6,900-square-foot Rite Aid in nearby Warwick Village, where United Parcel Service is building a customer service facility. The new store will carry more merchandise and more brand names and will double as a convenience mart, carrying refrigerated foods such as cold cuts, milk and eggs.

HAMPTON - A request by Rite Aid and Gloria Dei Lutheran School to build a free standing pharmacy at Fox Hill Road and Willow Oaks Boulevard has received an initial backing from the city's Planning Commission. If approved, Rite Aid would build a nearly 15,000-square-foot pharmacy and convenience store on the site of the existing Gloria Dei Lutheran School and day care buildings. The school would then build a series of small buildings just north of its existing location. Rite Aid already operates a pharmacy in the neighboring Willow Oaks shopping center.

HAMPTON — Police in Hampton have released surveillance images of two men suspected of stealing more than $3,000 worth of Mucinex sinus medicine from three local pharmacies. All three larcenies took place between 7:55 and 9 a.m. on Monday. The men used a large bag to take all of the Mucinex off the shelves at Rite Aid in the 4800 block of West Mercury, CVS in the 2300 block of West Mercury, and Rite Aid in the 200 block of Fox Hill Road. Police spokeswoman Allison Quinones said the two men stole a total of 117 boxes of Mucinex valued at a combined $3,088.

By Nicole Paitsel npaitsel@dailypress.com247-4737 and 247-4737 | March 8, 2010

As a working mom, I don't have time to skip from store to store gathering up toilet paper here and milk over there. That's what I thought, at least. So I bypassed drug stores altogether. And then I received an e-mail from Rite Aid about the store's Single Check Rebate program. I had seen a few other bloggers promoting the enrollment program, so I stopped by a store to check it out. By good fortune, I chose a particularly lucrative week to explore the "Drug Store Game" possibilities.

The Warwick Center store, in the space formerly occupied by grocery stores, is expected to open Feb 26 and will replace the smaller Rite Aid in nearby Warwick Village shopping center. The new store have 11,000 square feet of space and will include a drive-through pharmacy and an express mail, fax, copy and photo area. The store also will include convenience food as well as health and beauty aids. The Rite Aid on J. Clyde Morris will be a free-standing store, replacing the Rite Aid in the Oyster Point Shopping Center.

GLOUCESTER Gloucester County's Board of Supervisors approved the relocation of a Route 17 Hardee's Tuesday night so a Walgreens can be built on a corner lot where the restaurant currently stands. But the question remained whether the three-road intersection at Guinea and Hook roads would host three national pharmacy giants. Eckerd and Rite-Aid already have stores there. A Rite-Aid spokeswoman in Pennsylvania said the company is poised to complete its purchase of the Eckerd chain, but a decision on store closings has yet to be made.

Police arrested a 29-year-old woman Wednesday in connection with a series of drugstore robberies. Amanda Lea Lowrie, of the 1400 block of Hastings Drive, was charged with two counts of robbery, two counts of conspiracy to commit robbery and two counts of use of a firearm while in commission of a felony, police say. Police say the suspect in each robbery was a man. In each case, he approached the clerk armed with a handgun or implied that he...

HAMPTON — Police are looking for a man suspected of robbing three drug stores in the city. The suspect is described as a white male between 20 and 25 years of age, 5 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs between 170 and 200 pounds. At 3:50 a.m. Sunday police responded to a robbery at Walgreens at the 900 block of W. Mercury Boulevard. The suspect was wearing a dark hooded sweat shirt, and blue jeans. Police believe the same suspect robbed a CVS Pharmacy at the 2300 block of W. Mercury Boulevard on Saturday and Rite Aid at the 4800 block on Feb. 3. Police say in each case the man was armed with a handgun and demanded money from the register.